MEN: Silva key to City's success.

19 April 2014 07:48

Posted by @NieldyMCFC

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It’s a busy Easter weekend in the Premier League however City must wait until Monday evening before they can next take to the field for the first of the the quintet of fixtures that will bring another dramatic season at the Etihad Stadium to a close.

With that, there’s little in the way of Blues news to really get your teeth into this Saturday morning so I’ve scraped the bottom of proverbial bulletin barrel for you here.

The Manchester Evening News lead with a stat-fest to prove how City have struggled in games this term in which we have been missing the influence of Spanish maestro David Silva. An obvious statement? Probably. But Oliver Todd’s piece still manages to throw up one or two nuggets of info that may surprise you:

"Without (Silva), the Blues have only won 58% of games in all competitions this season, compared to winning 73% of games when he has started.

“Yaya Toure has been pin-pointed as City’s key man this season but by contrast City actually win MORE games when the Ivorian midfielder is missing and are yet to lose a game that he has missed following Samir Nasri’s late equaliser at the Etihad.

“City average around the same number of goals without their chief playmaker, but the difference in their points-per-game figures – 2.27 with to 1.95 without – show the impact that Silva has when his team need him most.”

Worthy of a PFA Player of the Year nomination you’d think, wouldn’t you?

A player who has been shortlisted for the award is Yaya Toure. The midfielder is widely reported across the media board as claiming that he and other African players don’t receive the global recognition they deserve due to their birthplace, and that the standings in the game of his fellow Ivorian Didier Drogba and Cameroon's Samuel Eto'o have suffered for the same reason.

The Telegraph, Guardian and Mirror (amongst others) all run with quotes taken from a recent BBC Football Focus interview with Yaya:

““To be honest, proper recognition has only come from the fans. I don’t want to be hard and I don’t want to be negative, but I want to be honest.

““If you go to any part of Africa now, people will say, ‘yes, we know him (Leo Messi)’,” Toure said. “But when you come to Europe and say ‘Yaya Toure’ people will say, ‘who is that?’

““Some will say they know my name, but not know my face. But they will know Messi’s face.

“”I am very proud to be African, I want to defend African people and I want to show to the world that African players can be as good as the Europeans and South Americans.””